...yawn...

Sleep. It has proven to be elusive as of late. At least for me it has. Can't really nail down a specific, singular cause...I have my suspicions though. For about a week or so, I was staying up until the wee hours because I wasn't necessarily tired. That evolved into being extremely tired, but not being sleepy. Then that turned into being physically exhausted, but being wide awake with no hope of even nodding off in front of the television. Believe me...I tried. Last night I was up all night, passing the time between the computer and TV. It doesn't take long to run out of things to do on the computer, and the television fare isn't that great during the smaller a.m.'s. I mean, just how many consecutive episodes of "The Nanny" can one person stand? I'm here to tell you, not many. I did catch most of a movie I recommended on my haunted house film entry, "The Innocents". American Movie Classics was showing it, and I was thrilled to have something decent to watch. After it ended and I was well into my third or fourth episode of "Reba", I looked out the windows in the kitchen and noticed it lightening up outside. The sun was rising and I wasn't any nearer to feeling like I was going to go to sleep...(sigh)...

Around noon-thirty today I crawled into bed to try and get a little shut-eye. A part of me wanted to try and tough it out until a decent bedtime (at least 9:00 pm), but I seriously doubt I would have made it. My porch light was on, but I wasn't really home. I was well into the toothpick stage (my eyelids were quite droopy) and was mere moments away from drooling on myself. I decided that sleep was imminent, so I decided to crawl into bed for a bit. Told Glenn to make sure I was up by 3:00 if I did nod out. Which I did. Apparently, so did Glenn. On the sofa. His M.O. is sleep after food consumption and he had eaten a slab of quiche...needless to say I didn't get up at 3:00. More like 5:00. I just didn't want to sleep for eight or nine hours cause I knew it would really screw with my sleep cycle. Screw it up more than it already is. I really hate insomnia. Years ago, I was awake for 8 days straight once. It was horrible...felt like I would never sleep again. Literally. Never want to go through that again. I don't think my current situation will come to that. This all started because of shoulder and neck pain I've had in varying degrees for several weeks now. I tell you, I know I'm only 45, but sometimes I feel like I'm 100. It's currently 3:51 am and I'm wide awake...looks like I'll be up to see the sun rise yet again.




One of the things I did while I was up last night (Sunday) was catch a considerable chunk of the live U2 concert on YouTube. They were playing to a massive crowd at the Rose Bowl in Los Angeles, and the whole thing was streamed on the internet. Was an impressive undertaking and pretty cool. Huge stage in the round, tons of cameras, lots of self aggrandizing shenanigans from Bono...quite the spectacle, it was. I was more a fan of U2 back in the early days of the early 80's. Back when "Gloria" hit. Their first album, 'Boy', was followed up by two great efforts, 'October' and 'War'. I'm not saying that they haven't produced good stuff beyond that point, they just started their commercial slide. Also, Bono Vox kind of began his road to "Sainthood"...in the eyes of a lot of people anyway (me, not among them). I appreciate that his heart seems to be in the right place, but...well, there is a rant that could easily take off at this point if my brain weren't so hazy. Back to the concert. During the show, I was commenting back and forth some with a friend of mine, Tracy, who lives out in Los Angeles. We were both amazed and impressed at a) how crisp the picture was, and b) how good the production quality was for a live performance. The editing on the fly that was taking place was really well done. They obviously had pros design and set up the cameras, as well as having great people in the switching booth. I've seen edited concert footage on DVD's that wasn't that good. Very cool. It would be great if this prompted other bands to do the same kind of thing. The fact that people all over the world were watching that one concert, well...it was just really neat.

Guess I'll go check out the fantastic selection of television shows airing for my viewing pleasure at...ugh...4:24 in the morning. Maybe I'll luck out and another good movie will be on. I can only hope...(yawn)...